Winter Serenade

Night was a whirling mass of darkness with savage voice and with savage fingers clawing at the mountain. There were no stars. Creatures of the night eschewed familiar paths and haunts to wisely remain warm and secure in sequestered places. There was only the wind and the voice of the night. The trees were bent wraiths, flinching before the anger of the wind.The storm was on a high lonesome on the lonely mountainside.

Far below, feeble lights flickering in the darkness revealed the presence of men. Houses were barred against the storm. The wind rattled loose gates and window shutters, raging to be denied the warmth within the houses. The broad highway skirting the base of the mountain, with a dark pathway in the night over which an occasional automobile cautiously picked its way. Not a pleasant night to be traveling about in, but fate and destiny decree not all God's creatures shall be warm and secure on cold winter nights.

By morning the storm had blown itself away. There were no clouds, only a sky of blue ice. There was no wind on the mountainside, only silence of a white winter world broken every now and then by the cracking of a limb weighed down with snow. Mountain animals ventured forth from their sequestered places leaving marks in the snow where they walked.

The sunshine straining through the cold, crisp air was bright but not warm so early in the morning and where the light snow caught the sunshine there was the flash of diamonds, gleaming precious jewels flung about with the spendthrift's grace.

The mountains, clad in wintry white, were silent in the bright sunshine. The storm that came in the night had moved on.

WINTER SERENADE

The trees on the mountainside threw long shadows but even there the light was reflected so that the snow crystals were blue diamonds. Never were the mountains more beautiful, never was the air more clear. Far below, smoke was coming from chimneys, a sign that coffee pots were bubbling, ham and eggs were sizzling in many pans. One look at the mountain peaks, engraved alabaster against the cold blue sky, was enough for anyone to know that the snow would be perfect for skiing.

Nor did it take long for folks to find out. The snow plow came first, a groaning and chugging monster with a deep baritone voice, pushing the snow aside to clear the road to the lodge in the Sno Bowl. Then came the early skiers in their cars following the plow. The silence of the deep winter day on the mountainside was broken by the sound of machines, impertinent contraptions with no respect for mountains.

Then there came a place where the machines faltered so the skiers got their paraphernalia together and started out to examine the wonderland created by the storm of the night before. The dry, fine snow showed the marks of the skies as the skiers climbed higher and higher up the mountainside, their breaths white mist in the cold mountain air. When one paused and looked back, there was spread out below the whole amazing terrain of northern Arizona, a white carpet mottled with the fringes of forest that rolled over the plateau. How big and beautiful the world we live in, and never so big and beautiful as seen from a high mountain!

When the top of the slope had been reached the skiers sped downward, their gay sweaters streaks of moving color against the white snow which the sun turned into diamonds.-R. C.